Latest Spacecraft propulsion Stories

The US military’s advanced research division is working on a new program that would make it possible to launch a satellite directly from the underbelly of a jet fighter, potentially providing an innovative, quicker, and less expensive way of putting a payload into orbit.

Next-generation weapons that reduce the Navy’s reliance on gunpower should be the primary goal of the service’s scientific and technological research, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert said this week during a military conference in Washington DC.

Since its arrival at Venus in 2006, Venus Express had been on an elliptical 24‑hour orbit, travelling 66 000 km above the south pole at its furthest point and to within 200 km over the north pole on its closest approach, conducting a detailed study of the planet and its atmosphere.

NASA has successfully tested the most complex rocket engine parts ever designed by the agency and printed with additive manufacturing, or 3-D printing, on a test stand at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Escape Velocity -- An escape velocity is the minimum speed at which an object without propulsion can move away from a source of a gravitational field indefinitely if there is no friction.
This definition may need modification for the practical problem of two or more sources in some cases. In any case, the object is assumed to be a point with a mass that is negligible compared with that of the source of the field, usually an excellent approximation. It is commonly described as the speed...

A pivoted catch designed to fall into a notch on a ratchet wheel so as to allow movement in only one direction (e.g. on a windlass or in a clock mechanism), or alternatively to move the wheel in one direction.